Building event stack on WSO2

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I want to deploy an event processing stack, based on WSO2, but can't figure the Feature installation process.

I've downloaded latest Carbon (4.0.2) and want to install probably ESB, BRS, CEP, BAM and maybe later API Management.

I've connected to the Turing feature repository

2 questions:

  • in the available features list I don't see BAM or BRS, although ESB, CEP and API are there. What do I need to see these other parts ?

  • when I select CEP and ESB for installation I get a "install modified" and no features are selected.I imagine this is something to do with feature version incompatibility

  • if I just select ESB, the installation seems to proceed but the server won't restart (hangs waiting for one of the Synapse services.

It feels like I have the wrong process to determine what set of features/versions I need. How should I proceed ?

2

There are 2 answers

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txtechhelp On

Carbon does not like to play well with it's other components. I've never been able to successfully use Carbon to manage any WSO2 stack. Each time I've setup/deployed a WSO2 stack I've ended up manually configuring the separate components config files individually. Usually starting with the ESB first, then adding in the CEP then the BAM.

You must also make sure they start in the correct order and that the config files don't stomp on each other (make sure your port offsets are set).

You don't need Carbon to run any instance of the WSO2 stack, simply 'install' it (unzip the wso2X.zip file) then make sure the service starts (call wso2X/bin/wso2server.sh start) and that's about it for the general setup, after that you need to configure each component to play nice with each other component (meaning you need to hook your BAM and CEP into your ESB, etc.) there isn't a lot of 'auto' config or discovery so it's usually easier to go the manual route with WSO2.

Also note that WSO2 products are Java extensions (essentially wrappers) around other Apache products (like Tomcat/Synapse) so usually if you are having a problem with WSO2, its because the underlying system (Tomcat/Synapse) was not properly configured (though that is no fault of your own as the WSO2 documentation does not make any mention of ensuring the base system is configured properly).

Also note that in my testing of WSO2 products, they consume huge amounts of memory (could not run more than the ESB and BAM on one machine because of the 8GB+ memory eaten by each) and a trouble ticket had to be put in to rectify a memory leak found in WSO2's Java modules, not sure if that was ever fixed.

Not trying to negate WSO2, but just be warned that it's not a pretty undertaking and you might fare better with other 'cloud' options if you have a choice.

edit: I've had to test out different 'cloud' stacks (with different types of 'plugins' or web services if you will) and how interoperable they were; as it turns out, they're pretty interoperable if YOU have total control over the individual stacks, otherwise the biggest downfall of any of the stacks that I found was simply documentation ... I don't care if a program has bugs or issues, as long as they are properly documented with possible workarounds (if any) so that I am aware of what is happening on my stack. Since WSO2's products were just Java wrappers for the Apache versions of their offerings (i.e. WSO2's ESB == Apache Synapse), any problems that occurred where usually solved in Apache's documentation (what little they had for certain problems) while WSO2's documentation had a lot of copy/paste issues (if they had any documentation beyond version 1). It was usually easier to just download and install the actual Apache offerings over WSO2's offerings then afterwards install WSO2's products and point them to the valid Apache configs/installs.

I did some testing with the Microsoft stack with Azure and general IIS/.NET offerings of equivalent services (The IIS/.NET equivalents of an ESB/CEP/BAM/etc. for what could be found). On the MS side, the documentation was enough (and there's enough people buying into the hype of cloud right now) that I could stand up most of the services semi-easy. I say semi-easy because of the misnomer (or my misunderstanding) of the 'ease of use' of 'cloud' services. I also found a product called Neuron ESB which is a .NET ESB offering, though I didn't do any thing with it during my testing so I can't speak to it.

Testing Amazon's offerings turned out the be some of the easier to setup and configure; the biggest issue with what I was testing for AWS was general internet latency.

Most of this is personal conjecture and I highly recommend you evaluate each as the 'cloud' space is constantly changing and each cloud platform has something slightly different to offer.

TLDR: the cloud space has a lot to offer and one should really consider what it is they are trying to achieve in the long run then evaluate each platforms offerings to see which fits. That being said, documentation and internal vendor interoperability (i.e. the vendor's products ability to easily communicate with each other) definitely help a product's 're-usability' factor.

0
Sameera Jayasoma On

Turing feature repository is not compatible with Carbon kernel 4.0.2. You can download Carbon kernel 4.2.0 and connect to Turing feature repository.